Open Skies

Being an avid film buff and a theatre writer, I am on a constant look out for metaphors and ironies. And when even a clichéd metaphor suddenly props up in the real world, I can’t help but be in awe. Something similar happened on this journey beneath the blue skies of the Ladakh valley.

Sky represents the vastness of existence and to those more spiritually inclined it is also a metaphor for the powers that be. But this cliché was made more profound when I stared deeper into the sky, trying to decipher what it all meant. The answer was always in front, right there, but a human mind is so full of ordinary materialism that it is sometimes myopic. All sorts of entangled connections were made by the mind:

The sky was blue, can it mean calmness. That all is fine and life is nothing but a motion towards the calm end.

The cotton white clouds represent the possibilities that lay in front of us, in the vast ocean of life.

Sky is looking down and blessing us with its vivid blue.

Maybe the sky is the paradise that we all seek to go to.

And many more of such inane thoughts flashed across, all at once, jumbling up in the process, and making no sense at all. All these were just ramblings of an idle, often stagnant mind. The truth was far simpler, far superior. And the truth made far more sense.

The sky that opened up before us with its clouds as beautifully chaotic blemishes was nothing. It was a void. There was nothing to be gathered from it, nothing that it could give. It was simply a vast nothingness that life is. Sisyphus was burdened with rolling the stone up the hill, again and again. But what was he doing really? The repetitive task came to naught. He was doing nothing. And he was happy. As we all should be while rolling the stone of life under the vast nothingness of the beautiful blue sky. There is no reward at the end. There are no pearly gates to arrive at. It is just this nothingness.

For a non believer, this turned out to be a little too spiritual! Those who have visited Ladakh must empathize with me. It is not often that we get to see the unreal in reality. It is not often that we are as close to nothingness.

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Aglastation

All of us are city bred boys, we try and get away as often as possible. We’d like to see the world outside the concrete jungles we live in. We love food, art and sport. We hope to take in as of much of the world as we can……